The Angriest Man In Television
How David Simon’s disappointment with the industry that let him down made The Wire the greatest show on television—and why his searing vision shouldn’t be confused with reality
By Mark Bowden
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Behold the Hack, the veteran newsman, wise beyond his years, a man who’s seen it all, twice. He’s honest, knowing, cynical, his occasional bitterness leavened with humor. He’s a friend to the little scam, and a scourge of the big one. Experience has acquainted him with suffering and stupidity, venality and vice. His anger is softened by the sure knowledge of his own futility. And now behold David Simon, the mind behind the brilliant HBO series The Wire. A gruff fireplug of a man, balding and big-featured, he speaks with an earthy, almost theatrical bluntness, and his blue-collar crust belies his comfortable suburban upbringing. He’s for all the world the quintessential Hack, down to his ink-stained fingertips—the kind of old newshound who will remind you that a “journalist” is a dead reporter. But Simon takes the cliché one step further; he’s an old newsman who feels betrayed by newspapers themselves.
Read the discussion about David Simon in Matthew Yglesias's blog. Also see what David Simon himself had to say about this discussion.
For all his success and accomplishment, he’s an angry man, driven in part by lovingly nurtured grudges against those he feels have slighted him, underestimated him, or betrayed some public trust. High on this list is his old employer The Baltimore Sun—or more precisely, the editors and corporate owners who have (in his view) spent the past two decades eviscerating a great American newspaper. In a better world—one where papers still had owners and editors who were smart, socially committed, honest, and brave—Simon probably would never have left The Sun to pursue a Hollywood career. His father, a frustrated newsman, took him to see Ben Hecht’s and Charles MacArthur’s classic newspaper farce, The Front Page, when he was a boy in Washington, D.C., and Simon was smitten. He landed a job as a Sun reporter just out of the University of Maryland in the early 1980s, and as he tells it, if the newspaper, the industry, and America had lived up to his expectations, he would probably still be documenting the underside of his adopted city one byline at a time. But The Sun let David Simon down.
So he has done something that many reporters only dream about. He has created his own Baltimore. With the help of his chief collaborator, Ed Burns, a former Baltimore cop and schoolteacher; a stable of novelists and playwrights with a feel for urban drama (including George Pelecanos, Richard Price, and Dennis Lehane); a huge cast of master actors; and a small army of film professionals shooting on location—in the city’s blighted row-house neighborhoods and housing projects, in City Hall, nightclubs, police headquarters, in the suburbs, the snazzy Inner Harbor, the working docks—he has, over four seasons, conjured the city onscreen with a verisimilitude that’s astonishing. Marylanders scrutinize the plot for its allusions to real people and real events. Parallels with recent local political history abound, and the details of life in housing projects and on street corners seem spookily authentic. (A New York City narcotics detective who loves the show told me a few years ago that street gangs in Brooklyn were watching it to learn tactics for avoiding cell-phone intercepts.)
Despite the show’s dark portrait of “Body-more, Murdaland,” local officialdom has embraced The Wire, giving Simon and his cast and crew free rein, opening up municipal buildings and cordoning off outdoor spaces. Many prominent citizens, including former Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke and former Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich, have made cameo appearances. The dress, manners, and colorful language of the show’s cast, which is largely African American, are painstakingly authentic, down to the uniquely slurred consonants and nasal vowel sounds of the local dialect, Balmerese. The Wire seems so real that I find myself, a Baltimore native, looking for the show’s characters when I pass through their familiar haunts.
The show hasn’t been a big commercial success. It’s never attracted a viewership to rival that of an HBO tent-pole series, like The Sopranos or even the short-lived Deadwood. It isn’t seen as a template for future TV dramas, primarily because its form more or less demands that each season be watched from the beginning. Whereas each episode of The Sopranos advanced certain overarching plot points but was essentially self-contained, anyone who tries to plumb the complexities of The Wire by tuning in at mid-season is likely to be lost. If the standard Hollywood feature is the film equivalent of a short story, each season of Simon’s show is a 12- or 13-chapter novel.
Some years ago, Tom Wolfe called on novelists to abandon the cul-de-sac of modern “literary” fiction, which he saw as self-absorbed, thumb-sucking gamesmanship, and instead to revive social realism, to take up as a subject the colossal, astonishing, and terrible pageant of contemporary America. I doubt he imagined that one of the best responses to this call would be a TV program, but the boxed sets blend nicely on a bookshelf with the great novels of American history.
As The Wire unveiled its fourth season in 2006, Jacob Weisberg of Slate, in a much-cited column, called it “the best TV show ever broadcast in America.” The New York Times, in an editorial (not a review, mind you) called the show Dickensian. I agree with both assessments. “Wire-world,” as Simon calls it, does for turn-of-the- millennium Baltimore what Dickens’s Bleak House does for mid-19th-century London. Dickens takes the byzantine bureaucracy of the law and the petty corruptions of the legal profession, borrows from the neighborhoods, manners, dress, and language of the Chancery courts and the Holborn district, and builds from them a world that breathes. Similarly, The Wire creates a vision of official Baltimore as a heavy, self-justified bureaucracy, gripped by its own byzantine logic and criminally unconcerned about the lives of ordinary people, who enter it at their own risk. One of the clever early conceits of the show was to juxtapose the organizational problems of the city police department with those of the powerful drug gang controlling trafficking in the city’s west-side slums. The heads of both organizations, official and criminal, wrestle with similar management and personnel issues, and resolve them with similarly cold self-interest. In both the department and the gang, the powerful exploit the weak, and within the ranks those who exhibit dedication, talent, and loyalty are usually punished for their efforts.
There are heroes in The Wire, but they’re flawed and battered. The show’s most exceptional police officers, detectives Jimmy McNulty and Lester Freamon, find their initiative and talent punished at almost every turn. Their determination to do good, original work disturbs the department’s upper echelons, where people are heavily invested in maintaining the status quo and in advancing their own careers. The clash repeatedly lands both of them in hot water—or cold water; at the end of the first season, the seasick-prone McNulty is banished to the city’s marine unit. What success the two attain against Baltimore’s most powerful criminals is partial, compromised, and achieved despite stubborn and often creative official resistance.
One measure of the complexity of Simon’s vision is that the powerful obstructionists in The Wire aren’t simply evil people, the way they might have been in a standard Hollywood movie. While some are just inept or corrupt, most are smart and ambitious, sometimes even interested in doing good, but concerned first and foremost with their next promotion or a bigger paycheck. They are fiercely territorial, to a degree that interferes with real police work. In the premiere episode, the very idea of a separate squad to target the leadership of the city’s powerful drug gangs—which one would assume to be a high law-enforcement priority—is opposed by the police department. It’s imposed on the commissioner by order of a local judge, who’s outraged when a witness at a murder trial in his courtroom fearfully recants her testimony on the stand. To spite the judge, the commissioner staffs the unit with castoffs from various police divisions. Some of the castoffs are so alcoholic or corrupt they’re useless, but some, like the lesbian detective Shakima Greggs, or the patient, wise Freamon, or the ballsy, streetwise McNulty, are castoffs precisely because of their ability. In Simon’s world, excellence is a ticket out the door.
In one of the show’s most interesting set pieces, a remarkable police major, “Bunny” Colvin, frustrated by the absurdity of the city’s useless drug war, conducts a novel experiment. Without the knowledge of his superiors, he effectively legalizes drugs in West Baltimore, creating a mini-Amsterdam, dubbed “Hamsterdam,” where all of the corner dealers are allowed to set up shop. By consolidating drug dealing, which he knows he cannot stop anyway, Colvin eliminates the daily turf battles that drive up the murder rates and dramatically improves life in most of his district. Calm returns to terrorized neighborhoods, and his patrolmen, freed from their cars and the endless pursuit of drug-dealing corner boys, return to real police work, walking beats, getting to know the people they serve. The sharp drop in his district crime stats shocks the department’s leadership and makes Colvin’s peers jealous—and suspicious. They assume he’s cooking the books.
WATCH A SCENE FROM
THE
WIRE:
A character walks through “Hamsterdam,” |
Again, it’s a tribute to the depth of Simon’s imagination that this experiment isn’t presented as a cure-all. He doesn’t minimize the moral compromise inherent in Hamsterdam. Many addicts see their severe health problems worsen, and the drug-dealing zone becomes a haven for vice of all kinds. Decent people in the community are horrified by the officially sanctioned criminality and the tolerance of destructive addiction. The experiment ends ignobly when news of the unauthorized experiment reaches the ears of a Sun reporter. City Hall reacts to the story with predictable horror, scurrying and spinning to escape blame. Colvin loses his job, and the city goes back to the old war, which is useless but politically acceptable.
Story lines like these reflect the truth about Baltimore; Mayor Schmoke’s own promising political career crashed and burned some years ago when he had the temerity to suggest a less punitive approach to the city’s drug problem. But they don’t reflect the complete truth: like Dickens’s London, Simon’s Baltimore is a richly imagined caricature of its real-life counterpart, not a carbon copy. And precisely because the Baltimore in The Wire seems so real, down to the finest details, the show constitutes an interesting study in the difference between journalism and fiction. Simon’s first book, Homicide, was a critically acclaimed work of nonfiction, from which some of the themes, characters, and even stories of The Wire are drawn. (It was also the basis for the 1990s NBC show Homicide: Life on the Street.) Which raises the question—if your subject is the real world, why deal in fiction?
The answer has something to do with Simon’s own passions and his deeply held political beliefs. “I am someone who’s very angry with the political structure,” he said in a long 2006 interview with Slate. “The show is written in a 21st-century city-state that is incredibly bureaucratic, and in which a legal pursuit of an unenforceable prohibition [the war on drugs] has created great absurdity.” To Simon, The Wire is about “the very simple idea that, in this postmodern world of ours, human beings—all of us—are worth less. We’re worth less every day, despite the fact that some of us are achieving more and more. It’s the triumph of capitalism. Whether you’re a corner boy in West Baltimore, or a cop who knows his beat, or an Eastern European brought here for sex, your life is worth less. It’s the triumph of capitalism over human value. This country has embraced the idea that this is a viable domestic policy. It is. It’s viable for the few. But I don’t live in Westwood, L.A., or on the Upper West Side of New York. I live in Baltimore.”
This is a message—a searing attack on the excesses of Big Capitalism—that rarely finds its way into prime-time entertainment on national TV. It’s audacious. But it’s also relentlessly … well, bleak.
From the archives:
"The
Code of the Streets"
(May 1994)
In this essay in urban anthropology a social scientist
takes us inside a world most of us only glimpse in grisly headlines.
By Elijah Anderson
Interviews:
"Street Life"
(August 28, 1999)
Elijah Anderson talks about his book, Code
of the Street,
and the importance of looking honestly at life in the inner city
“I am struck by how dark the show is,” says Elijah Anderson, the Yale sociologist whose classic works Code of the Streets, Streetwise, and A Place on the Corner document black inner-city life with noted clarity and sympathy. Anderson would be the last person to gloss over the severe problems of the urban poor, but in The Wire he sees “a bottom-line cynicism” that is at odds with his own perception of real life. “The show is very good,” he says. “It resonates. It is powerful in its depiction of the codes of the streets, but it is an exaggeration. I get frustrated watching it, because it gives such a powerful appearance of reality, but it always seems to leave something important out. What they have left out are the decent people. Even in the worst drug-infested projects, there are many, many God-fearing, churchgoing, brave people who set themselves against the gangs and the addicts, often with remarkable heroism.”
This bleakness is Simon’s stamp on the show, and it suggests that his political passions ultimately trump his commitment to accuracy or evenhandedness. The imagination, values, and convictions of a writer play a big part in even the most accurate nonfiction, of course. Telling a true story well demands that the reporter achieve his own understanding of the events and people described, and arriving at that point can mean shading reality, even if only unconsciously. We view the world from where we sit. Truman Capote, in his nonfiction classic, In Cold Blood, finds a clue to the motives of the murderers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, in unrequited or unconscious homosexual desire. Norman Mailer’s preoccupation with mystical themes gives the senseless killer Gary Gilmore a romantic aura in The Executioner’s Song. In The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe’s fascination with masculinity and social status allows him to cast the early space program as a prolonged reprise of ancient single-combat rituals. In each case, the author’s unique perspective gives a “true” story a starkly original shape.
But the more passionate your convictions, the harder it is to resist tampering with the contradictions and stubborn messiness of real life. Every reporter knows the sensation of having a story “ruined” by some new and surprising piece of information. Just when you think you have the thing figured out, you learn something that shatters your carefully wrought vision. Being surprised is the essence of good reporting. But it’s also the moment when a dishonest writer is tempted to fudge, for the sake of commercial success—and a more honest writer like Simon, whose passion is political and personal, is tempted to shift his energies to fiction.
Which is precisely what he’s done. Simon is the reporter who knows enough about Baltimore to have his story all figured out, but instead of risking the coherence of his vision by doing what reporters do, heading back out day after day to observe, to ask more questions, to take more notes, he has stopped reporting and started inventing. He says, I have figured this thing out. He offers up his undisturbed vision, leaving out the things that don’t fit, adding things that emphasize its fundamentals, and then using the trappings of realism to dress it up and bring it to life onscreen.
The essential difference between writing nonfiction and writing fiction is that the artist owns his vision, while the journalist can never really claim one, or at least not a complete one—because the real world is infinitely complex and ever changing. Art frees you from the infuriating unfinishedness of the real world. For this reason, the very clarity of well-wrought fiction can sometimes make it feel more real than reality. As a film producer once told me, “It’s important not to let the facts get in the way of the truth.”
Fiction can explain things that journalism cannot. It allows you to enter the lives and motivations of characters with far more intimacy than is typically possible in nonfiction. In the case of The Wire, fiction allows you to wander around inside a violent, criminal subculture, and inside an entrenched official bureaucracy, in a way that most reporters can only dream about. And it frees you from concerns about libel and cruelty. It frees you to be unfair.
In a session before a live audience in Baltimore last April, for a local storytelling series called The Stoop, Simon was asked to speak on a topic labeled “My Nemesis.” He began by reciting, by name, some of the people he holds grudges against, going all the way back to grade school. He was being humorous, and the audience was laughing, but anyone who knows him knows that his monologue was, like his fiction, slightly overstated for effect, but basically the truth.
“I keep these names, I treasure them,” he said:
I will confess to you now that anything I have ever accomplished as a writer, as somebody doing TV, as anything I have ever done in life down to, like, cleaning up my room, has been accomplished because I was going to show people that they were fucked up and wrong and that I was the fucking center of the universe, and the sooner they got hip to that, the happier they would all be … That’s what’s going on in my head.
This vindictive streak, this desire to show people how wrong they are, is tempered somewhat by Simon’s sense of humor and his appreciation for complexity, and by the vision of his many skillful collaborators. But in the show’s final season, which debuts in January, Simon will revisit the part of Baltimore that’s closest to his heart, The Sun. The season, more than any other before it, will reflect his personal experience. Given his long memory and his inclination to settle old scores, the difference between fiction and fact will be of particular interest to his former colleagues.
The newspaper’s management rightly viewed Simon’s intentions with trepidation, but given that City Hall and the governor’s mansion embraced his jaundiced vision, how could the Fourth Estate refuse to open its doors? So The Sun has allowed the show to use its name and even build an exact replica of its newsroom so that Simon and his company can flesh out their story line with greater authenticity. It isn’t going to be a comfortable ride, because Simon is apparently set to exorcise some personal demons. His vision of Baltimore was shaped largely by his work as a crime reporter, and it seems likely that his anger about capitalism and the devaluation of human life is rooted in his unhappy experience at The Sun.
A famous quote from the great Sun Papers columnist H. L. Mencken is reprinted in large type on the wall of the spacious lobby in the newspaper’s building on Calvert Street. It reads:
… as I look back over a misspent life, I find myself more and more convinced that I had more fun doing news reporting than in any other enterprise. It is really the life of kings.
It was that promise, that “life of kings,” that animated Simon and many other reporters who started in the business 20 years ago.
“I love this place,” Simon told the Stoop audience last April, speaking of his frame of mind at age 22, when he was starting his career as a Sun reporter:
This is the place of H. L. Mencken, of Frank Kent, of William Manchester. It’s like you can touch things that you can be proud of. I just have to do good work for its own sake … I’m basically happy, and it’s like the least ambitious I am in my life. Until … it gets sold out of town. And these guys come in from Philly. The white guys from Philly. And I say that with all the contempt you can muster for the phrase white guys. Soulless motherfuckers. Everything that Malcolm X said in that book before he got converted back to humanity—no, no, he was right in the first place. These guys were so without humanity. And it was the kind of journalism—how do I describe bad journalism? It’s not that it’s lazy, it’s that whenever they hear the word Pulitzer, they become tumescent. They become engorged … All they wanted to do was win prizes … I watched them single-handedly destroy The Sun.
The “white guys” Simon so viciously abused in this talk (and not for the first time) were William Marimow and John Carroll, notable newspapermen who are my friends; Marimow was a longtime colleague of mine at The Philadelphia Inquirer. He eventually left The Sun in conflict over newsroom cutbacks with its corporate owners (originally the Times-Mirror Corporation, which was absorbed by the Tribune Company in 2000) and went on to head the news division of National Public Radio. Last year, Marimow returned to helm The Inquirer, a newspaper where he had earlier won two Pulitzer Prizes for reporting. Carroll became editor in chief of the Los Angeles Times, resigned defending the newsroom there, and is now at Harvard University. Both have impeccable reputations in their field, and I hold them both in high esteem. Simon hates them.
He hates them in part because they were agents of change at The Sun, the institution he loved, initiating a process familiar in newsrooms all over the country. Just as the efforts of great detectives like McNulty and Freamon are neither valued nor supported by their bosses, many superb reporters and editors at The Sun, and with them the paper’s higher mission, were betrayed by the corporate pursuit of profit margins. Marimow and Carroll were for a time agents of that process, an unpleasant role that many fine newspaper editors have found themselves in during the past decade. Yet to Simon they are all the more culpable because they didn’t publicly object to a talent drain that he felt devastated the newsroom. There’s nothing unique about the situation. The sad story is familiar to newspaper people all over the country. (I watched it happen at The Inquirer, where Knight Ridder threw just about everyone and everything of value overboard before bailing out of journalism altogether.)
Some of us chalk up this trend to market forces, to the evolution of information technology, to television, radio, and the Internet. At the long-since-departed Baltimore News-American, where I worked before being hired at The Inquirer, we used to joke that people didn’t read our newspaper, they played it. The paper was full of number and word games, along with sports scores, racetrack results, TV listings, comics, want ads, and advertisements with clippable coupons. One by one, these multifarious reasons why people used to buy newspapers have been cherry-picked by newer media; that includes the paper’s most basic offering—breaking news, whose headlines are now available on most cell phones. Declining circulation means declining advertising, which means declining revenues, so corporate managers face a tougher and tougher challenge maintaining the high profit margins that attracted investors 30 years ago. These are just facts, and different people and organizations have handled them with different measures of grace and understanding.
But to Simon, this complex process became personal, boiling down to corporate greed and the “soullessness” of Marimow and Carroll. It’s an honest opinion, but arguably unfair, flavored by personal bitterness and animosity. (Simon told a writer from American Journalism Review that he was angered by the paper’s unwillingness to grant him a raise after he returned from a leave of absence in 1995—he was writing The Corner—and he took a buyout six months later.) Given his vindictive strain, his talent for character and drama, and the national TV show at his disposal, such an opinion is also a combustible one.
I should note here that it isn’t hard to join Simon’s enemies list; I did it myself while writing this essay. I first contacted Simon several years ago, as a fan of his show and as a screenwriter and aspiring producer interested in learning more about him and how he’d created it. He was friendly and helpful, and I remain grateful. Then in 2006 after the fourth season of The Wire had aired, I decided to write a tribute to Simon and his show. I contacted him by e-mail to see about renewing our conversation on different terms, and he consented. He asked me to avoid writing about his personal life, and I agreed. I was determined, as well, to avoid discussing his dispute with Marimow and Carroll, since I liked and admired both parties, and was disinclined to choose sides.
When I discovered, after my last conversation with Simon, that the final season of the show would be based on his experiences at The Sun, I felt compelled to describe the dispute, but I resolved to characterize it without entering it. To avoid exploiting anything that had passed informally between us on the subject, I relied on Simon’s ample public commentary to explain his feelings, and then, realizing that the essay had strayed in an unanticipated direction, showed him an early draft to solicit correction and criticism. I got it. The draft provoked a series of angry, long-winded accusations, which would have remained private had he not taken his complaints to TheAtlantic’s editor, in an angry letter impugning my motives in contacting him originally, and characterizing all our interactions as my attempt to win his confidence in order to skewer him on behalf of my friends. I could see myself morphing into a character in his show.
Simon has already given Marimow’s name to a character in The Wire, a repellent police-department toady who, in the hilarious words of the show’s Sergeant Jay Landsman, “doesn’t cast off talent lightly, he heaves it away with great force.” But this was just a minor swipe: the final season of The Wire will offer Simon the chance to take on his old enemies from The Sun directly. An article that appeared in the October 2000 issue of Brill’s Content hinted at the tack he may take and went to the core of what he says are his objections to the pair. It featured Simon, then five years removed from the paper and well into his enormously successful second career, making the case that a widely respected Sun reporter, protected by Carroll and Marimow, was making up stories and distorting the truth in a hell-bent effort to turn a series on lead-paint poisoning into a competitive Pulitzer submission. Simon felt the editors purposefully ignored the misgivings of some of the newspaper’s veteran reporters in an effort to bolster their new star. To the editors, it was a case of an aggressive reporter who had made a few mistakes in pursuit of an important story. To Simon, it was an example of all that was wrong with the remade newspaper, and a reminder of the clash over journalistic values that had led him to quit in the first place. In his mind, The Sun had also abandoned its mission to really cover Baltimore, and was now fiddling while the city burned. Instead of exploring the root causes of the city’s intractable problems—drug abuse and the government’s unenforceable “war” against it, racism, poverty, rampant Big Capitalism, etc.—the newspaper was engaged in a largely self-congratulatory crusade to right a minor wrong.
Sure enough, one of the upcoming season’s story lines deals with a newspaper’s muckraking campaign on homelessness. It’s likely been crafted to represent Simon’s take on a typical Carroll-Marimow project: motivated less by a sincere desire for social reform than by a zeal for Pulitzer Prizes. (The paper did, incidentally, win three Pulitzers under the editors’ guidance. Normally, in the newspaper world, this is considered a triumph, but for Simon it just adds bitter spice to an already bad dish.) And whereas the Brill’s reporter who wrote the story was painstakingly evenhanded, Simon’s fictional version of events will carry no such journalistic burden.
Apart from the distress this causes the real people behind his sometimes thinly veiled depictions, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with this. It’s how an artist shapes a fictional drama out of his own experience. Simon is entitled to his take on things, entitled to exploit his memory and experience, his anger and sense of betrayal, just as he exploited his cynicism and political outrage about official Baltimore in the show’s first four seasons. Indeed, given the richness and power of his vision in The Wire, we ought to be grateful for his unforgiving nature. The kind of reporting he felt could no longer be done at The Sun he has brought to the screen. But his fiction shouldn’t be mistaken for fact. It reflects, as much as anything, Simon’s own prejudices.
In my decades in newsrooms, I encountered my share of hard-core skeptics like Simon, but those resembling the stereotypical Hack were the exceptions. It is true that the more true stories you tell, the more acquainted you are with suffering, stupidity, venality, and vice. But you’re also more acquainted with selflessness, courage, and decency. Old reporters and editors are softened by knowledge and experience. If anything, they become less inclined to suspect or condemn. They encounter incompetence more often than evil, and they see that very few people who screw up do so in ways that are indefensible. After years of drumming up the other side of the story, old reporters are likely to grow less angry and opinionated, not more.
In that sense only, David Simon may be truer to the stereotype than the stereotype is true.
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/01/the-angriest-man-in-television/306581/
Copyright © 2013 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved.
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Is David Simon really a journalist? Are those the standards we should use?
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It can be argued that David Simon should not be held to the standards of a journalist but rather Simons falls under the category of story-teller/ city activist. In an interview with wired.com, Simon responds to viewers who questioned, “Why don’t they leave, man? Baltimore is kind of a fucked-up place." Simon responds:“And I never felt that way. I don’t feel that way to this day. I live in Baltimore. And I live in New Orleans [in reference to his work on Treme]. I’m invested in the survival of both cities. I was shocked by the tonality of that — that people thought we were just being cynical and implying a certain kind of decay. No, we were arguing for the city.”
Simon makes a conscious effort with The Wire to keep the grittiness of Baltimore in tact. He is not looking to expose the city, in most cases, in the way that journalists expose their subjects for the purpose of creating a story. Rather, Simon seeks to tell the stories of Baltimore, bringing reality to the viewers of The Wire, and most broadly to, as he puts it, “save the city or you lose the American spirit.”
Full article is found here:http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/11/david-simon-tv-journalism-cia/all/
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spolier alert It is interesting that Simon creates a sensational journalist (Scott Templeton) to ‘expose the city’ in season 5 and that through this journalists’ efforts to sensationalize Baltimore’s stories, he becomes a true antagonist and is summarily denied exit from the city (to the Washington Post). Simon’s belief in his city and the genuine “American spirit” embodied by cities like Baltimore leads him not to demonize, but generate an antagonist out of those who would try to take advantage of or take for granted the city. At the same time, Simon is behind the creation of the faux serial killer McNulty, but that seems to almost be lost in the story-telling when looking at Templeton and his exaggerated reporting of the case.
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A reporter has more of a connotation related to truth and the importance of reporting on it. Whereas, journalism seems like it can be embellished more. It can be more biased or “frilly” in language. David Simon may not be a reporter, but he could, in fact, be considered a journalist. He reports on what he sees, BUT does so in a way that is biased based on his middle age, white man point of view.
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He makes it sound as though a journalist sensationalizes the truth and therefore is not actually reporting the truth. Is this the type of reference Simon is attempting to make?
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I have previously watched the entire show, and this is one point of the article which I particularly agree on. I think Simon does to a point go over the top with his allusions to real life people throughout the course of the show, particularly in his shaping of Avon Barksdale into a carbon copy of former kingpin Melvin Williams (who has several cameos as an actor in later seasons) and even more so in his depiction of Martin O’Malley’s rise to power in city and state politics through the character of Thomas Carcetti. In a way, it is interesting to see these stories depicted through the eyes of someone who witnessed them, but any time you are basing a TV character on a real person, you run the risk of exaggerating some points and making the inspiration into a caricature of themselves. I don’t want to spoil important plot points for people who haven’t watched the whole show yet, but for those of you with knowledge of Williams and O’Malley, you’ll see tremendous character flaws that may or may not be a fair representation of the actua person.
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Although some Marylanders and Baltimoreans may claim that The Wire portrays Baltimore in a harsh and unfair light, I honestly am not offended by the show and believe that what the show does portray are important matters that should not be overlooked. I was somewhat apprehensive about watching the show, because when I have told people I am from Baltimore, some have responded with disgust or fear due to their viewings of the show. Instantly, I felt a close connection with my hometown when watching the show. Although I went to an all girls preparatory school and live far removed from the drug-trade in the city, the problems I know about Baltimore, such as the school system, the police force, and the drug and murder rate, are portrayed in a way that does not look down completely upon Baltimore but the greater institutions and economic problems with urban America in general. If anything, I am glad that the show exposes Baltimore City’s problems and I believe the show brings up good conversations to be had about our struggling power structures.
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I think that it is important to embrace a part of your hometown, even if it is not always portrayed in the brightest light. I think that even when you are not living directly in the middle of the Baltimore culture displayed in The Wire, you can still appreciate parts of the city. I can say a similar thing about my hometown city, Washington DC. DC has had plenty of scandals, a high murder rate, and lots of poverty. There are many areas of the city people try to avoid, but one thing that I think is cool about DC is the city’s efforts to clean up the “bad areas.” One of the worst parts of DC, Anacostia, is now the home of Nationals Park, the relatively new baseball stadium. While it is in a not-so-good area of town, the stadium is sparking up an economy in the surrounding neighborhoods and is effectively cleaning up that area of the city. Just like Baltimore has its issue areas, so does DC, and whether it is a TV show or baseball stadium, it is important to realize that every city has its issues, and there are different ways of embracing it.
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The phrase “clean up” sections of a city is interesting. We all use it and it’s a common phrase in media and public discourse, but what does this mean to you?
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I agree with you that it is an admirable and important task to fully explore and portray the various socio-economic and political issues that plague certain cities and urban America in general. While I cannot claim the direct experience of identifying The Wire, I can claim a similar one in Simon’s newer work Treme and my hometown of New Orleans. As a show, Treme is vastly over exaggerated in the rituals, attitudes, and behaviors of the people of New Orleans, which many people from the city find insulting. I feel as though that over exaggeration is just a necessary consequence to get your message across to outsiders with no prior experience or knowledge of a culture that they would not connect with otherwise.
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This was very interesting to read, given that you are from the place that the show is depicting. I can definitely understand the points you are making, and I tend to agree (though I am not from Baltimore). It seems like the show does a good job of providing a realistic depiction of the city. Does the fact that the show was actually filmed on location in Baltimore make it even more realistic? Would the show have the same connection if it was filmed in a Hollywood studio?
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Is it possible to place an artistic work that seeks to speak to real-life issues – a novel, TV show, movie, etc – in an existing location without audiences automatically searching for connections with current-day political figures or other celebrities? On the one hand, I think the possibility of these connections helps strengthen the show’s claims that the issues faced by the characters are much more true to life than the good vs. bad plotlines of similar shows. However, it seems that looking for the real-life dopplegangers of these characters and events could lead some audience members to miss the overarching themes in favor of identifying individual plot points. Does one or the other of these possibilites play out more strongly for audiences of The Wire familiar with the political/institutional history of Baltimore?
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Good point. Figuring out what is accurate or “true-to-life” is complicated. I agree with what I think is your point that we make a mistake when we seek simple definition of one-to-one connections between a character on a show and a person in “real life.”
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The reference to the local street gangs of Brooklyn, New York and their acquired knowledge from the Wire brings light to the reality of this television series. Cell-phone intercepts are highlighted in season 1, and result in leads to further convictions of various Baltimore drug dealers. Because of the paid actors and Hollywood set up, many may assume that the Wire is unrealistic. The Wire is actually very realistic, and this is proven by the real life acquisition of “street knowledge” that is transferred into the real world. David Simon, the creator of the HBO series provides television audiences with real life scenarios that occur in the urban underworld. Many scenes in the Wire are often real events made into Hollywood scripts.
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Simon and the his cast and crew were given “free rein” in Baltimore with the ability to shoot scenes in municipal buildings as well as casting many prominent citizens in the city of Baltimore. I believe that because of the backing of local officials, Simon was able to portray a more authentic and accurate urban environment of the Baltimore area. Do you think that it was important that Simon received this free rein and do you believe that it accurately or negatively effected the outcome of the series?
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I think it was critical that Simon was able to receive “free rein” as the show was made. Having natives make guest appearances who have actually been in the environment which is trying to be portrayed makes a huge difference. There is only so much that Simon can put in a script; however, with the life experiences of the actors on the show, they can really add something extra. For Simon to be able to shoot all over the city I also believe was key. Had they not been able to shoot scenes in the projects, than the story would not have been as believable. When “Prez” blinded the kid in the ally, I could really picture something like that happening. Free rein for Simon really helped make the show what it is.
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I also agree. I think Simon having “free rein” in Baltimore made the show what it is. The Wire is praised for being one of the best shows on television, and I think a lot of that has to do with how authentic and realistic the characters, settings, and plots are. I think you are right that being able to shoot in municipal buildings and other places around Baltimore, as well as, casting real Baltimoreans in specific roles or as extras helped create this authenticity within the show, something that could not have been written into the script or staged by directors if filmed elsewhere. If you were to shoot the show somewhere else, cast actors with no connections to Baltimore or life in a poor urban area, I fear that as an audience we would only get a show that incorporates stereotypes or generalizations of gangs and inner-city life. That authenticity captured in The Wire would be lost.
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The fact that Simon was given free rein throughout the series is what makes The Wire such a unique television series, and different from any other series on TV. Bowden says that it’s so real that he finds himself looking for the characters when passing through the city; which he describes as spookily authentic. Simon’s casting decisions add to the authenticity and realism of the series. Simon chose to cast non-professional actors in the minor roles, which literally showed the faces and voices of the real city. Another interesting aspect about the series is that gangs in Brooklyn were watching the show to learn tactics for avoiding cell-phone intercepts (paragraph 8). From reading different articles about the show, I have also learned that the shows portrayal of the Baltimore Sun’s newsroom is known as the most realistic portrayal of the workings of a newsroom and the media. I am anxious to watch this season because of my past and present experiences working in the media and all my time spent in various newsrooms. It will help me also to better understand the free rein Simon entertained throughout his series by being able to directly identify with it. To summarize: I think Simon’s free rein was extremely beneficial to the outcome of the show. Detectives and police officers can identify with those in the show, gangs and criminals are said to have learned tactics and strategies from watching, and apparently the media industry is portrayed extremely realistically.
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The Wire, like many other HBO series, has a certain unique ability to make the viewer sympathize with its characters and their corresponding actions, regardless of the how morally-questionable those characters or actions are. This quality is what often times makes series on HBO (and Showtime) so successful. Why, given the fact that The Wire certainly has this special quality, was the show not nearly as successful as the rest?
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I think that there are a couple of reasons why The Wire was not as successful as its HBO/Showtime counterparts. For one, I think The Wire starts off kind of slow. After the first episode I remember not being too impressed with it. But as I got deeper into the series, all the pieces started to come together to form a very compelling storyline. In this modern age, I think that people, especially when it comes to entertainment, have very short attention spans. Thus, if a show, movie, etc. does not immediately grab the attention of the viewer, the viewer is usually reluctant to continue watching. Secondly, I think that Simon’s primary goal of The Wire was not to produce a super successful commercial show (although that would be nice). I think that Simon was more preoccupied with telling an authentic story of Baltimore. In order to accomplish this, complex storylines were created that are not always the most thrilling and captivating at times. For me, The Wire is not always fast-paced and action-packed, like most commercial television series. Moreover, the authentic and intricate build-up and inner-workings of such complex issues that plague the majority of cities is the true accomplishment of The Wire.
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The Wire, in commercial terms, was not deemed a success. In the article “The Wire: Truth Be Told” by Rafael Alvarez, David Simon writes an introduction outlining the process by which he came to conceive and produce The Wire. He describes the complexity of the show, his compounded plot presenting Baltimore as a “culture that is parasitic and self-aggrandizing.” He lays out his intentional straying from the traditional good and evil characters in an effort to accurately represent the larger institutions in which “rogue elements are in command.” Simon and HBO did not care if it was not a commercial success. The show, as Simon notes, was an “extraordinary risk” because the show demands a deeply and intensely devoted viewer; one that requires those confused to remain patient and perseverant. Simon had “no intention to destroy the proverbial fly on the wall point of view” in order to safely guide The Wire’s viewers to comprehension. The show moves slowly, offering viewers a chance to make their own decisions. Oftentimes, shows are unsuccessful because of their “novelistic pace.” Like Kiley states, the authentic buildup of The Wire, accurately represents the raw complexities of urban America and the people who are left out of the corrupt social framework.
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Commercial success does not accurately measure the impact of this series. David Simon and the collective group of writers and directors create an unorthodox approach to the Hollywood script. There is not a typical “bad guy, good guy”, rather the overall institution is highlighted. Instead of demonizing the usual suspects, the institutions are shown to place individuals in situations that have a chance to demonstrate their motives. A show that goes against the social norms of Hollywood is likely to be unsuccessful commercially.
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I think the biggest issue at play is exactly that the show gets off to a bit of a slow start, and in my personal opinion, slows down even more so in season two. The problem with that is that you lose viewers who are not patient enough to wait and see the big picture unfolding through several seemingly random story lines. I think an even better example of this unfortunate effect can be seen with another HBO Series, Boardwalk Empire, which seemed to struggle mightily along for the better part of two seasons before finally starting to hit the right notes in its most recent third season. Similar to how I sometimes view reading for some classes, I think that people just have to be willing to push through episodes and story lines which may not seem as interesting (as I found myself doing for much of the second season of The Wire) because everything that happens will be important later on, usually in unexpected ways.
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Professor Williams mentioned this topic briefly in class, sort of the idea that news could be revamped to appeal to the public in the way that The Wire does. It educates AND entertains. The entertainment factor is crucial for getting and maintaining an audience, since we live in an environment of distraction in which attention is fleeting.
Still, as this article points out, “the show [wasn’t] a big commercial success,” yet in the right setting, like our class, it can be a great teaching tool. So how differently would our world be if we learned about more topics, problems, political issues, etc. through programs like this one? How would one create and then promote a market for this? Is it feasible or not even worth considering?
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This sentence jumped out at me for its final words – “ordinary people, who enter it at their own risk.” Throughout the series, characters are mentioning “the game” and the rules, implications, and consequences of being a part of said game. That final phrase captures the essence of the show existing as the characters are involved with this structure and interacting with each other as members of the game. Logically, ordinary people should be the substance of every institution involved with the show – the police forces protect the people, the drug dealers sell to the ordinary people, newspapers have ordinary readers, education is for the citizens – the pattern seems obvious. However, in the context of The Wire, these ordinary people are peripheral. They can enter or leave the game “at their own risk” rather than being a central focus of those playing the game.
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One thing that I find very interesting about The Wire is how the police and drug dealers are portrayed. At first thought, it would seem impossible for these two establishments to be considered as anything but complete opposites. But Simon does an amazing job of breaking down those first reactions and showing how similar these two groups of people really are. Both drug dealers and law enforcement have similar hierarchal structures, with a drug lord or police chief commander at the top, all the way down to the street level dealers and field cops. Like the chess game D’Angelo describes in season 1, there are the kings, and the pawns, and everything in between. What Simon opens up his viewers’ eyes to is that this chess metaphor fits both hierachies. In the drug world and police world, there are people who try to manipulate others and work their way to the top (like the pawn getting to the other side), and there are people who work hard and honestly. For example, McNulty and D’Angelo, although they deal in completely different lines of work that are perceived as good and evil, they both have that “good side” to them, trying to right the wrongs in their worlds and doing things the best ways that they see fit.
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This is a good point. I think it is also important to recognize that being “good” is often not in the best interest of many characters. You brought up D’Angelo and McNulty, the former a morally aware drug dealer and the latter a frequent advocate of good “police work”. Both of these characters face obstacles that arise directly from institutional disapproval of their “good sides”. In David Simon’s introduction to The Wire: Truth be told, he addresses the American myth that societal responsibility can result in personal achievement. In short, he dismisses it as “a lie”. If anything, The Wire makes it clear that doing the right thing sometimes isn’t the best thing to do.
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One part that I found particularly interesting in this article is where it mentions how McNulty and Lester often encounter backlash from their superiors even when they do profound work. This fact in particular was one of the things that struck me so far in The Wire. I never really imagined a police department that was a bureaucratic in nature as the Baltimore PD homicide unit is. More specifically, Major Rawls is particularly obsessed with maintaining his “clearance rate” as opposed to working to solve cases in the most complete way possible. It really was shocking for me to see a police department covered in this type of way, because it contrasts with the positive images of police departments in other shows.
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One of the things that stood out to me about Season 1 was the antagonism towards McNulty/Freamon’s idea of good police work. At what point did the justice system become more focused on clearing cases than solving crimes? If statistics are so important to the institution, how is that we are unable to quantify good police work and reward it? Another thing that startled me was in the beginning of Season 2 when Pryzbylewski expressed interest in continuing to work on cases that “mattered”, only to be told by his superior and father-in-law that he should focus on advancing his career, not solving crimes. I think it is the pervasive, career-driven attitude of Americans that has resulted in an emphasis on statistics at the expense of real results. I’m not sure if this is the result of a moral decline, or some other societal shift that has created a singular focus on monetary/career success. I suspect the latter, since at times it almost seems that people want to do the right thing, but fear for their careers. This is especially evident in the character of Lieutenant Daniels, who often reluctantly makes the morally correct decision for fear of losing his job.
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On several occasions during season one, those of administrative authority repeatedly tried to shut down the work of the detail unit in exchange for a few low-level targets. Such an action would have compromised the breadth of the investigation and would have failed to remove major targets of the drug trade from the street. The treatment of the detail unit in season one, particularly that of Jimmy McNulty, makes me wonder: is some kind of committee within the police department that oversees inter-departmental activities/cases that could have prevented such a potentially significant case from being shut down?
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I think that maybe The Wire’s biggest accomplishment as a T.V. series is its ability to make the audience sympathetic/identify with the drug dealers, or the typically “bad guys”. It is not a good guys vs. bad guys fight in which there is a clear team you are rooting for, but rather I find myself often rooting for what would be considered “the bad guys” in most other shows. The fact that David Simon and Ed Burns are able to eliminate this distinction and have the audience rather look at the characters as products of the system and their environment and are able to portray them as deeper than just gang members that are killing people is a real feat not seen in most other television shows. Bowden’s line “In Simon’s world, excellence is a ticket out the door” is particularly interesting because it is fully representative of the bureaucratic system of the police system and politics that we see in The Wire. McNulty, Bunk, and other good policeman are often in trouble because of the work they are doing because it strays beyond the lines, instead of sticking to the status quo way of going about doing policework in which the outcome is predictable. Similarly in Baltimore politics in Season 3, Carcetti is defeated in trying to be excellent; in trying to make real, fair, just change, and instead must end up reverting to old political ways because the system does not allow for excellence or true change.
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I absolutely agree that The Wire has an impressive way of making the audience sympathetic with all of the characters, and the idea that, in the show, it is never about who is the good guy and who is the bad guy because this isn’t a show about right and wrong and good and bad. The show connects the audience to the characters, regardless of their occupation, because we see the people in a more whole, well-rounded light that displays all the aspects of the person rather than putting each character in a one-dimensional, good guy or bad guy box. The show becomes more about the interplay between the characters and the institutions and the systems that they are a part of and navigating every day. I find myself more frustrated with the system or a situation brought on by the way things are in an institution than I am with a certain character and their actions. The Wire, by showing the audience the institutions a person is a part of, the occupations and the effect of the job on a character, and constantly reminding the audience that the individuals are a part of something bigger than themselves, helps to give all of the characters a level of depth that enables connections to be made by the audience to any one of the people in this show.
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I, too, have quickly become a fan of this show because of its seemingly realistic portrayal of criminals and cops, showing how the systems in which both exist have striking and surprising similarities. While I went into this show knowing/expecting (based on comments I had heard from others) that the characters you’d deem the “bad guys” are far more complex than such a shallow label.
What I did not foresee, though, is just how flawed the police system would be, the side that I associate with “fair” and “just.” As I know Simon wanted, I really was on Team McNulty and was repeatedly frustrated by the hoops he needed to jump through in order to pursue what I assumed would be a high-priority investigation.
Now, I am a bit conflicted in my perception of the show’s truthfulness, though, for Bowden forces me to remember that what I’m watching is still a television show. Like many other programs, there’s going to be a level of subjectivity and opinion therein based on a show’s creators. The question at the moment for me is how to best interpret the show and distinguish fact from fiction. How much does that matter in the grand scheme of things? How should we make meaning of the characters and the show, knowing that Simon has a major axe to grind?
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The ways The Wire compares and contrasts government institutions and criminal structures makes the show compelling. I was drawn to the illustrations of how the structure of the workplace, whether in an office or a a city street, affected the actions and personalities of the characters. Workers in each department seek out more responsibility and want promotions. They want to avoid the difficult assignments that, if done incorrectly, can be disastrous, resulting in a demotion, loss of job, or even worse, loss of life.
Bowden says, the police department is “fiercely territorial, to a degree that interferes with real police work.” We see one damaged hero try to rise above the “doing just enough to get by” mindset and yield real results. For example, McNaulty proves to be an effective investigator when dealing with Baltimore’s massive drug market. In Season One, his real police work is punished and he is banished to the marine unit. Despite the consequences and instructions from superiors, McNaulty dd the work he thought would be best for the case. He was one officer who was not afraid to upset the status quo of the police department. While McNaulty worked as if he was not very fearful of the wrath of his superior, the drug dealers had more fear in their hearts. When Stringer Bell ordered Preston Broadus and Malik Carr to kill a young employee, Wallace, they force themselves to comply because they feared the consequences if they failed to do so.New Conversation
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I think this is an important point to note in the article, where Bowden observes that Simon does not explicitly make the “powerful obstructionists” antagonists, but rather leaves it to the viewer to determine whether or not it is the individuals within the institution (city hall, the police, the newspaper, etc) that generate obstruction to “good police work,” or is the institutional structure (grounds for promotion, career advancement, etc) that causes the individual to become an obstructionist? This distinction is never clearly resolved throughout the show and frustrates the viewer with no clear “bad guy” to root against. At what level does the viewer decide who (or what) is the antagonist—the individuals making up the institution, or the institutional structure itself? It is unclear who or what to blame for the obstruction because individual obstruction and structural obstruction are so closely inter-related and correlated.
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“The Wire” presents a complex portrait of corruption at a variety of levels, critiquing the legal system as riddled by self-serving individuals so caught up in advancing their own careers that they fail to understand the moral obligations and duties as officers and officials of the law. This notion of corruption is indeed the overarching theme of the show, and Simon continually investigates the shortcomings of the legal institutions in both humorous and serious ways. Humorously, Simon throws in subtle jokes that actually speak volumes to the incompetence of the police and the fallibility of humans, illustrating that police are subject to the same emotions, vices, and passions that drive criminals themselves. For example, a joke on one officer’s duty to “protect and serve” implies making sexual advances on a witness; two officers steal large stacks of Benjamin’s during one break-in; and the entire force is unable to perform a task as simple as moving a desk through a door because both opposing sides are not in agreement as to where exactly they are trying to move the desk. Such instances are received with a general nonchalance and are not necessarily marked as incredibly important, though they do speak to the larger themes of corruption and incompetence that pervade the show. I believe that Bowden’s claim of the show consisting of essentially “good” people who are concerned first and foremost with climbing the ranks is more or less accurate, but the picture Simon presents might be even more grim than Bowden perceives. The only redeeming factor, perhaps, is McNalty himself, who—although his motives can never be entirely understood—demonstrates the admirable qualities of eliminating corruption and always following his conviction.
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I would argue that it isn’t excellence that people in the system hate. If there was a homicide detective who cleared 80% of his cases every year, he would undoubtedly be rewarded. McNulty and Freamon were ostracized as they were for not maintaining the status quo. In fact, when McNulty is first pitching the case, no one knows who Barksdale is. McNulty avoids the chain of command by approaching a judge and ultimately stirs up a fuss about someone that no feels is important. As the season progresses, it becomes more and more clear that Barksdale is a worthy target, but it is worth mentioning that McNulty’s involvement with the detail puts a lot of strain on the homicide division’s regular case load. Obviously, chain of command is less meaningful when the higher ups put personal ambition above good work, but there is a reason why it exists. The military is very strict in its adherence to chain of command, because people lower on the food chain typically have less information and don’t understand the circumstances as well as people higher up. McNulty’s case might be different, but it is worth recognizing the value in a chain of command structure.
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I think one of the most interesting aspects of The Wire is its ability to not only point out flaws in the drug game but in the bureaucratic political system of Baltimore. Throughout the show we watch as McNulty and other cops, who are just trying to do good work, are punished by their superiors who are more worried about promotions and clearances. We are constantly exposed to flaws in our own justice system, and most of the time it seems that those in power are less worried with saving innocent lives than they are with the bottom line. I think the example of Colvin legalizing the drug trade is a great example of the gray area that exists between what is socially and politically acceptable and what actually improves the quality of human life. While legalization isn’t a perfect cure (the article mentions this as well), it does have many advantages because it eliminates the turf war between drug gangs and greatly reduces the murder rate. If you look at these results it seems that legalization has been a much more successful tactic than other strategies that have been implemented up to that point. So while legalization may not be the most politically acceptable option, can we say it might be the answer for a place like Baltimore where the drug trade seems to have no chance of ending? Is it more important for a measure to be acceptable or for innocent lives to be salvaged? These are the types of questions that The Wire raises.
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I know that one of the points The Wire makes, which I have also heard Simon talk about in interviews, is that there is always a way to cheat the stats. The problem with using a simple statistic to rate an organization, such as clearances in a police department or test scores in the schools, is that there is always a way to make these stats look misleadingly positive. As we see in Season 4 of The Wire, if a school’s performance is measured by standardized tests, the school teachers are incentivized to teach to the test, which may not be in the best interests of the children.
I think the real issue here is that it is easy to see what constitutes quality work up close, but very hard to measure it statistically. In The Wire we get an up close view of the work that goes on in a police department, and it is very easy to tell that the work McNulty wants to do will ultimately be more effective at reducing crime and violence in society than the work that Rawls or Burrell do. However, if we agree that statistics cannot show the difference between good and bad work, then how do we determine how effective an organization is?
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I agree that the widespread practice of “juking the stats” or “cooking the books” is a major issue within many institutions today. Within the capitalist system, every individual must look out for their own interests. While the American economic system allows for many great advantages and opportunities, the negative consequences are apparent in situations like these. As a person works to advance their own position or status, they often are faced with the opportunities to cheat the system, or to take shortcuts or routes that are not as morally sound. I think that this is an issue that is definitely addressed in The Wire. Ironically, McNulty seems to serve as a moral compass in these situations within the Police Department, rejecting the get-ahead-at-all-costs stereotype. As Bert mentioned, I think that these moral dilemmas and shortcuts will be especially apparent in Season 4. I have not yet seen that season, but I can imagine that the school system is an institution in which shortcuts consistently take place, despite the sensitive and important nature of schooling for America’s youth. I look forward to seeing how Simon explores the contrast between “what works” and “what is acceptable” throughout the next four seasons.
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I think Season 2 is the most explicit treatment of “Capitalism” as a (failed) socioeconomic system. It directly addresses the anti-union policies often pursued by the Federal government and what these actions have done to the working class of America. But the same themes that make Capitalism so destructive when it is used as a “social contract” (as David Simon puts it) are extant in the other institutions addressed by the show as well. Questions of morality are completely marginalized, almost to the point of a joke at times (McNulty can’t even identify a reason for his own pursuit of an identity for one of the girls in Season 2). Every major decision, even it if influences the lives of other human beings, takes place in a stuffy meeting room between bureaucrats who are most concerned about how the actions they take affect their careers. I think the show argues that the major cause of the decline of the worth of human beings is the valuation of capital over everything else (monetary, but also political/power capital as well), even over the lives of our fellow human beings. To me, this is a profoundly sickening way to run a society.
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This statement brings to light the extent to which politics affect institutions we rely on day-to-day. How do you think this problem persists in cities other than Baltimore? Do you think politics cripple the effectiveness of institutions to as great an extent in the real world as portrayed in The Wire? While I’m not certain that legalizing drugs is best way to deal with the “old war,” I do think it’s worthwhile to look at the ways in which politics stint legal processes and the efficacy of institutions.
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This is an excellent comment. I agree that legalizing drugs might not be the best solution to the war on drugs. However, I would contend that institutions within other cities also experience a similar political pressure. It seems that institutions’ desire to avoid bad publicity trumps that of executing their job efficiently. While I am not sure of the extent to which politics cripple the effectiveness of institutions in reality, The Wire’s portrayal of this matter makes me more skeptical of its real-world implications.
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I think that David Simon’s realistic depiction of the City of Baltimore is one of the factors that makes The Wire such a strong television series. As Bowden argues, it is this “richly imagined caricature” that makes the show transcend the typical expectations of television, and allows it to become an important social commentary. It stands apart from other television shows in that it creates real characters, complete with flaws and complex arcs. As we saw in class, many typical “cop shows” offer a depiction of the attractive, justice-seeking ‘good-guy’ crusading against the always immoral, unrelatable ‘bad guy.’ Many residents of Baltimore, including former Police Commissioner Fred Bealefeld, were incredibly upset with the ‘realness’ of The Wire’s depiction, arguing that it represented the city in a poor light compared to the representation of cities in other cop dramas. However, I think that Simon’s thin line between journalism and fiction creates a strong commentary on urban American as a whole. I believe that audiences should be able to understand the fact that this series reflects a counterpart vision of reality in Baltimore, and that this depiction of a city speaks on a whole different level than other population detective shows.
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I also found Bowden’s explanation of Simon’s Baltimore as a “richly imagined caricature” to be an eloquently put description that offers insight as to how we should analyze the series as a whole. Through its impressive verisimilitude and striking sense of realism, “The Wire” is undoubtedly a valuable social document that holds true merit in critiquing America’s legal system and the social underpinnings of criminality. However, it is important to keep in mind that the show is ultimately the product of David Simon and his television producing cohorts. Given this reality, the show has certain limitations and must be analyzed considering this man’s personal biases and prejudices. Given such circumstances, it is helpful to think of “The Wire” not as necessarily the portrayal of reality, but rather the creative treatment of reality. Considering the show to be a reflection of personal beliefs certainly adds a layer of difficulty to its analysis. Nevertheless, I believe the show still holds a profound amount of value in that it enables viewers a closer look at the structural issues of urban law enforcement. Despite the fact the show represents a somewhat subjective portrayal of Baltimore, it nonetheless paints a truthful landscape of the city, especially considering the plethora of Simon’s personal experiences and the fact that many events occurring in the show are based on actual events that took place in the real world.
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I think it is interesting to see how David Simon’s comment that “human beings – all of us – are worth less.” is portrayed in The Wire. To me, Stringer Bell exemplifies the ideals of capitalism. The drug business in The Wire is arguably the closest thing in today’s society to a truly free market. The government does not regulate the benefits or salaries of people working in Barksdale’s gang, nor does it regulate the price of the product. When Stringer tells D to stop paying his employees in order to find out who the rat is, they have no union to stand up for them, or any court where they can go to receive justice. Stringer realizes that he holds all the bargaining power in this arrangement, and is willing to ignore the suffering of his employees if it can help him find a rat in the organization. Conservatism, or more specifically, libertarianism both suggest that the less the government interferes with the market, the more efficiently the market runs. In the drug trade, this seems true. Stringer is able to run his business at its maximum profit potential because he is not accountable to anyone for treating his employees well. Stringer can pay his employees the minimum amount necessary to keep them fed and working on the streets, because many of them do not have any alternative employment. Stringer is living the dream of free market capitalism,, but as David Simon suggests, he seems to be devaluing the lives of the actual human beings working for him in the process.
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I think you provide a lot of compelling ideas in your comment about capitalism vs. the value of human life. I think interestingly enough we can see a parallel between your example of Stringer Bell and the Baltimore justice department. I believe that Rawls is another great example of a person that puts capitalistic desire over the value of human life. In Season 1 he almost completely destroys McNulty and Daniels drug case—which could save hundreds of lives if they are successful—to obtain clearance on three murder cases that have no chance of holding up in court. He is only worried about his department’s stats and his own well-being. We see this pattern over and over again where the superiors in the show (majors, deputies, etc.) are constantly getting in the way of cops that are trying to find real solutions and save innocent lives. They are more concerned with their own promotions and salaries. I think it is a sad truth that the devaluation of human life is existent in a system that should be first and foremost dedicated to preserving the quality of life.
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I think your portrayal of the drug game to free market capitalism is very interesting. Your Marx-esque critique of the devaluing of workers and their human rights is also interesting…you are referencing Stringer not having to treat his employees well meaning that they do not get paid well. To me, this brings up the question of are people like Bodie and Wallace really in the drug trade for the money, or is getting treated well defined more by their sense of belonging to something, that they have a gang at their side to defend them, and being in an environment that they feel comfortable in and that is why they enter the drug trade. They could be at school, or attempt to get menial jobs which some do later on in the show, but I would argue that they (the low-level “employees”) choose the drug trade not because of its financial benefits but for other benefits not traditionally defined. Of course on some level their lives are devalued because almost all (except for D) are seen as expendable, but I’m not convinced that not being paid well is what is devaluing them
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Simon’s notion of a corner boy in West Baltimore living a “worth less” life exemplifies that their lives are devalued by their careers in drug dealing. Yes, Stringer Bell does choose how much or often to pay his employees. But does that mean his actions devalue the dealers’ lives? The dealers know that they are committing their time and effort to an illegal industry. How Bell treats and pays his employees should not be confused. Although at times the corner boys may not be paid a lot of money (outside of their bonuses for doing extra assignments), they are treated very well. When D’Angelo was in trial (Season One, Episode One) for murdering a man, one of his witnesses changed her testimony. Both witnesses were later killed to protect D’Angelo’s name and the other employees. Bell enforces the norms of his workplace with fear, which makes him hard to like. But he goes well out of his way to stress that the corner boys must look out for each other and teach each other so that they can avoid jail time. I think he treats his employees well because he is willing to enlist many people to kill witnesses, rival dealers, or even commit jail time to protect his entire drug and front businesses (like the funeral home and copy shop). He provides protection from the police and rival dealers, which does not have a monetary price.
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Although you mentioned a number of services which Stringer provides for his employees, it is worth keeping in mind that everything you list is purely in Stringer’s self-interest. Killing witnesses is a huge liability, and it would be a mistake to think that he is ordering these people killed for the benefit of his employees. By keeping his employees out of jail he lowers his own exposure to the police, which is his primary concern.
Also, I must have missed the scene where Stringer, “goes well out of his way to stress that the corner boys must look out for each other and treat each other well”. Stringer knows that the corner boys are the most likely people to be picked up by the police on a daily basis, so it is in his interest to avoid talking to them as much as possible. Generally, Stringer seems to communicate with a small group of lieutenants who then relay orders down to the corner boys.
Lastly, I think the strongest example of Stringer’s disregard for the lives of the people working for him is when he orders Bodie to kill Wallace. Stringer has a strong suspicion that Wallace may be working for the police, but he has no evidence that this is the case. On a mere suspicion, Stringer has a 16 year old boy killed to protect his own interests.
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I would argue that the drug trade is far from a free market. Its illegality is perhaps the most extreme form of government regulation I can think of. Because the “industry” is deemed illegal, it stifles competition. The lack of available alternatives is what allows Stringer and Avon to continue treating their customers and employees poorly. Another feature of the drug trade that differentiates it from a free market is that it is dealing with customers who have no choice in whether or not to buy the product. They are addicts and the Barksdale organization exploits this every opportunity they get. This causes demand to be almost permanently inflated demand and a single supplier with government-imposed barriers to entry.
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How does he define “decent people”? It seems to me that one of the biggest strengths of the show is that it does not have specific characters labelled as the “good” ones, which is a sentiment echoed by others in this article and something that has been said in class numerous times already. That’s not to say, though, that decent people aren’t present – they’re just not decent to the point of not having flaws. I think it’s exactly because the show isn’t afraid to hide these flaws that the decency of some characters is able to shine through. Further, by refusing to label individual characters as good or bad, the show allows various characters to have decent moments at different times throughout the show, making them much more rounded. Although I don’t have experience in this context personally and therefore I can only conjecture, this seems like a much more representative example of the nature of individuals in these situations than it would be to have one or two shining decent characters in a mass of others doing things wrong.
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I think it is safe to argue that people like the witness towards the beginning of season 1 was a decent person. But, his decency got him killed. I don’t think people are going to be obviously decent out of fear they could end up dead.
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We all understand that The Wire is the story of Baltimore as seen through the eyes of Simon. The lifestyles that we see each episode from the characters are Simon’s own understanding of actual people from Baltimore. Do you think that it is necessary for Simon to shade reality in order to reach the conclusions of people and events? Why does he have to shade it in order to portray his story ?
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Simon is making an argument about structures of power in urban Baltimore through The Wire. Although there are, as Elijah Anderson says, “decent people” in Baltimore, Simon is not trying to present an evenhanded account of all the types of people who live in the city. He is using the show to make a point about Baltimore, and the point is that corruption exists not only on the streets of the city, but also in the bureaucracy of politics and law enforcement. Simon must therefore shade reality in order to make his argument salient and effective. When we write papers, we must pick and choose pieces of evidence that support our thesis. It would be unwise to include all pieces of information because it could weaken our overall argument. In similar fashion, Simon must decide how to show reality in a certain way in order to portray the story that he wants to.
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First of all this is both an impressive admission by Bowden an interesting peak behind the curtain. He is laying out an ethical struggle faced by reporters which I guess, at its very worst, leads to the New York Times and Jayson Blair. More realistically it might appear as quote-re-shaping and the like.
Anyway, the most striking part of this comment is that it feels like a complete dismissing of Simon’s work- a calling out of sorts. It is as if Bowden wishes to bring attention to The Wire creator’s departure from journalism in favor of fiction as a white flag. The author belittles Simon’s work by framing it as being the result of a cop out, because a more thick-skinned journalist would have stuck with it when the stories didn’t shake out as he had hoped. In other words, Bowden equates the creation of The Wire with a concession of personal failure by Simon himself. Now, he hedges his words with the “shifting” of “passion” statement, but I truly believe Bowden- himself a journalist- is using this piece at least in part to aggrandize the efforts of journalism which, reciprocally, demeans Simon as a journalistic wimp.
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It is well-established in this article that Simon uses his personal experiences, and fabrication, to create a fictional world that is an exaggeration of Baltimore. The article mentions the names of newspapermen at the Baltimore Sun, whose names also appear in the show. When watching the show, I made a mental note of Gregg’s monologue of why she became a cop: she mentions Charlie Smoot. I don’t know the validity of the thread, but a google search took me to a Baltimore Sun forum where several posters discussed that many names were based on real cases and people: http://talk.baltimoresun.com/showthread.php?t=134055.. What does Simon gain by doing this? Does it add to the authenticity of the world he is trying to create like shooting the show in Baltimore? Does it make the show feel more transparent? It is a personal vendetta based on his “angriest man” persona? Or, does it further confuse the differences between fact and fiction?
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The Wire is undoubtedly one of the best portrayals of the abandoned urban America through any medium in the 21st century. It portrays the best criticism of the urban political system and the tainted chain of commands in politics, portrayed not so differently from the Baltimore gang hierarchy. David Simon has cleverly chosen the right medium to convey his message, because technically as a TV show, he is not accountable for factual details. Also through the pathos of the characters, the ‘anger’ in the situation is conveyed more clearly because it’s more sympathetic and relatable to the audiences than the facts laid out on a news article. Actually, ‘hard news’ is often ridiculed in the show, as a source of medium controlled and fed by the top chain of the command (ex. When Kimma got shot, the Commander in Chief immediately just wanted a picture on the newspaper to make up for the tragic event). So David Simon cleverly chose the right medium to tell the story. However, since the show is so close to reality – with real people appearing as whom they are in the show – shouldn’t the producers of the show hold grater accountability in terms of the facts?
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I find the last question here particularly interesting. A few characters on the show (former mayor of Baltimore is one) play versions of themselves or others. I’d be interested to know if they consider their own portrayals accurate to the circumstances. I would argue that the actors delivering the lines has more of an impact on what we see than the writers. If this is the case, it might be a mistake to focus in so much on David Simon’s vision. There are a lot of others here who also left their mark on the show, many of whom have been intimately involved in situations similar to those on the show. There are many more places for bias to appear on The Wire beyond Simon’s own experiences.
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I disagree with your comment that Simon cleverly chose the right medium to tell the story. I think I agree more with Bowden, or atleast what I think he is trying to say in this article, that the fact that Simon uses a television show to make such a large political statement allows him to leave out anything counter factual. In using this medium, we hold Simon to a different set of standards than we might if he used another medium. When the show seems so close to the truth, even to those from Baltimore, some people may take his bottom-line, bleak vision as reality. While his show is for entertainment, he does have a political message embedded in the show that is not subject to questioning like it should be. I agree that while the medium Simon chose is certainly a more powerful way to depict the problems of the inner city, it does allow him to make his political comments without being held up to a higher standard. Just as you said in the conclusion of your comment, it may be a good idea to hold the writers more accountable in their presentation of urban America.
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Although The Wire is fiction, it does show an authentic side of the city of Baltimore. I think that this idea of being fiction, while being nonfiction, is the true success of The Wire. This idea allows the show to go into the inner-circles and the psyche of the violent drug culture and corrupt institutions. It allows the viewer to see things and understand things that pure nonfiction would not be able to. For example, if The Wire was truly nonfiction, we would not see the human and moral struggles of Wallace or D’Angelo. Just like everything else, we would see this as a classic case of the good vs. the bad guys. Thus, The Wire gives us a more rounded view on complex issues by allowing us to identify with all those involved.
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I agree with your comment on how the Wire is a fictional TV series with a heavy dose of authenticity associated with the City of Baltimore. The fictional aspect in the Wire is what really grabs the viewers attention because it shows hows the individuals in the show seem to act. Because of this it does not portray individuals as either good or bad, but more in a way that the viewer is able to understand what is really going on in their minds. Wallace and D’Angelo are great examples of this but so are Avon and Stringer Bell. Avon does not seem like the bad guy most TV shows would make him out to be. He always preaches about how family is the most important thing in life, and how he got a young African American basketball player into college. Stringer is attending community college which says to me that he wants the chance to make something more out of his life. Because of the fictional aspect of the Wire, we are able to sympathize with the characters and identify exactly who they are and their intentions.
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I also think the idea that fiction can explain things better than journalism is one of the key points of this article, and most poignant things to take away from this article, and, on a greater scale, this class. Viewing the show through the lens of media studies, one can see the advantages of using a fictional narrative to show real world problems in-depth. As Professor Williams has mentioned several times in class, David Simon can take the camera places he would never be able to in a non-fictional setting. I am interested to see how this concept plays out in season 5, where Simon will you media to portray the media of Baltimore, and whether or not the meta-media aspect of it will yield as strong an illustration of the issues as in season 1.
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David Simon mentioned in the introduction of the book on “The Wire”, the show is more like a novel, unfolding each character sequentially. By portraying Baltimore through a fictional medium, audiences can not only see the raw harshness of the city but also sympathize with the characters that are affected by it. The fact that every episode reveals the inevitable reasons why characters like D’Angelo and Wallace got involved in the game and why it’s almost impossible to get out of it, we are getting their side of the story – which is usually portrayed as the ‘evil’ of the society in other shows/hard news. It sheds a greater light into the problem of urban America than the hard news, which gets its information mostly from the limited source of high the chain of commands.
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There is not enough time on the nightly news or space in the newspaper to explain why another black male from the inner city ended up in jail or murdered. As people from the outside looking in, we tend to just place that black male into a category (usually a stereotypical one) that faults the individual and not so much an institution that affects that individual. In journalism, we might get all the facts and an unbiased report of a person arrested for possession of drugs, but as the consumer, we sometimes tend to blame the victim. The Wire is different. As people have already mentioned, The Wire does not vilify those involved in the drug trade or praise the police. The Wire makes it hard to label D’Aneglo, Wallace, Bodie, and Bubbs, as the bad guys. Yet, The Wire does a great job showing the viewer all sides of these characters, their lives, and the bigger uncontrollable forces that affect the outcomes of these characters. Bowden is right when he says, “fiction can explain things that journalism cannot”. My question is can The Wire help with debunking stereotypes and generalizations about poor urban areas and the individuals who live there?
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In the beginning of Simon’s journalism career, he described journalism as “God’s work.” He aimed to tell the best possible story, accurately portraying the truth. However, Simon is now extremely cynical about journalism and feels betrayed by the industry, blaming the changes in the industry on big capitalism. These changes in the industry have undermined traditional journalistic practices. Throughout the series, Simon attacks big capitalism—a theme that very rarely makes its way into prime time TV. The idea I would like to delve into deeper and discuss in depth in class are the differences between fiction writing and non-fiction writing (journalism). Bowden discusses that in non-fiction the artist owns his vision, while the journalist can never really claim one. Is this a fair and accurate assumption to make about the media industry, and journalism in particular? Or, is this a generalization that should not be so broadly applied?
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How does Simon think that change should be/can be carried out in institutions? In this article, we are shown his dislike for Marimow and Carroll because of the fact that they were “agents of change at The Sun, in institution he loved” and his hatred comes from his institution being “sold out of town. And these guys come in from Philly” which leads to the assumption that Simon didn’t feel that outsiders should be coming in to change a system that they were not previously a part of in the first place. When looking at The Wire, then, what are Simon’s thoughts on how to change the institutions that he introduces us to? Can change come from the bottom up – can McNulty, for example, make changes that move up through the institution or does the change have to come from a person at the top, like an Avon Barksdale, to change a whole system that he controls? Can change come only from those people invested, involved, and a part of the institution?
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The article quotes Yale sociologist Elijah Anderson, who claims that the show is dark, forgetting the good people within these communities that we are studying. When I watch the show, I can’t imagine how a few good people can fix the intricacies of institutional problems. I believe that Simon’s thesis may very well be that under the current American system of democracy and capitalism, these institutions cannot be reformed—- that considerably adds to what makes the show so dark. I think it is Simon’s wish that the good guys like McNulty can change the system, but because they are consistently thwarted instead of rewarded, that emphasizes the idea that change under the current systems would be very difficult (if not impossible) to institute.
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I agree with what Paige said here, and I think it’s an important point. The show is dark and cynical, but treats issues realistically. A few “God-fearing, churchgoing, brave people” are not going to reform a system that is corrupted from top to bottom. I don’t see any increased understanding of the problem by including them. The institutions are still broken by their very nature. The idea that “moral” actions are punished rather than rewarded in systems where (monetary/political/power) capital is valued over human lives is extremely important and provides a rather logical explanation for the sad state in which we find these institutions, even with a breadth of literature and research over several decades demonstrating just how screwed up they really are.
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In David Simon’s Prologue to The Wire reading, Simon contends that, in terms of network television, “the only product being sold is the programming itself.” The Bowden article makes it seem as though Simon was aware that the newspaper industry was dying. hence why Simon is adamant about explaining the difference between the reality of The Wire versus the myth of other television shows in his Prologue. I can understand why Simon fictitiously portrayed the series as close to reality as he could, but after the Bowden article I am confused as to why he did not make the show a documentary. My criticism is against all the acclaim the show has received pertaining to the accurate portrayal of the City of Baltimore. I wonder if Simon made the show fiction as a result of the upsurge and evolution of new technologies, in fear of being criticized as a poor journalist if he made the series non-fiction in the face of the Internet age.
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Having not seen season 5 and knowing that it is focused primarily on the ineffectiveness and corruption of the Baltimore Sun, is it fair to say that it more than any other season in the series may be distorted by Simon’s personal vendetta against Marimow and Carroll rather than actual fact? While I understand Simon’s displeasure in the direction of the newspaper industry in general, I certainly agree with Bowden that that direction is a product of the shift in modern media to television and internet and not just “corporate greed and soullessness.” Further, would it be completely unjust to not accuse Simon of that same “corporate greed” by abandoning newspaper journalism to become a writer for one of the primary culprits of the shifting of the times in HBO?
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I think it was wise for Simon to express his view of Baltimore in fiction form. He obviously has many passionate opinions about corruption and the manipulation of power in the Baltimore. He could have easily written a book based on real events in order to portray the corruption he has seen throughout his career as a journalist. I think the fact that he chose the fictional TV show route, however, shows that he is aware of his own bias. Journalists are bound to objectivity, and I think Simon knew that non-fiction story telling would not do justice to what he deeply believes. Fact can be restricting. Nevertheless, Simon seems to be a man who strives to present the truth of the matter in authentic fashion. But given the fact that The Wire has been described as extremely realistic, though, is the idea that Simon is biased (i.e. has beef with The Sun, etc.) problematic?
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Rose, I was struggling myself with why Simon chose a fictional television series to portray the city of Baltimore in this way. I think Simon believed he would receive far more criticism for the show as non-fiction as opposed to fiction. I wonder if he was afraid that he would lose credibility as a journalist? It would also be too difficult to create character involvement if the actors were in fact real people; there would be less of a story and the show could not run for very long without one.
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I agree with Alison for a few reasons. I’m sure the fact that there was criticism to be throw had an impact on him but given Simon’s personality I’m sure that is nothing new for him. Rather I feel that fiction was a necessary vehicle for him to tell his story. Many of the stories we hear from The Wire meld together so intricately that it would be almost impossible to gather all the stories individually and make the show as amazing as it was. Though this show is based a real issues in a real place at the end of the day people want to be entertained and nonfiction does not always get that done.
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Should we be more critical of Simon’s final season of The Wire since he is critiquing an institution he feels personally let down by? Is it possible that his depictions of the flaws of this medium, one in which he used to participate, are made less valid by his job at the The Sun? On the other hand, does his position as a newsman who feels let down by the institution put him in a unique position to tell this story? I am interested to watch Season 5 to see whether Simon handles this like the “Angry Man” Bowden paints him as or if he does it professionally. Bowden’s assessments are interesting given he is predicting what he thinks the fifth season will be like and can only guess based off of what storylines he has heard the show will follow. While Bowden seems dismissive of Season 5 already, I think it will be intriguing to watch it now knowing that Simon was once a reporter for The Sun and did not leave happily. These facts should give us a new lens to critique what we see in it and should allow us to make more informed judgments of Simon’s message. However, while we are in this position, are the majority of the show’s watchers aware of this? Is this an abuse of Simon’s position as a writer on a popular show?
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I’m sure I’m not the only one who has picked up on this but the fact that there are always people who have a career or have other motives that just make wrong look right and blurs the lines of what is the right thing to do rampant in the first season of the wire. Much of the time it seems that the characters on the police force are faced with two decisions: either a) do the right thing, try to make the case regardless of the pressure coming down on you by multiple bosses, the difficulty of finding all the evidence needed and so on. Or b) take the easy way out, let bad things happen to protect the appearance of the company. I feel Simon sees himself as Jimmy. The one guy who is willing to speak out about what he feels is right and wrong regardless of what that does to his reputation. He feels it is his responsibility to call out the institution for all of its flaws and hypocritical actions. Though his motive could be interpreted as noble he seems to be carrying a chip on his shoulder that is detrimental to himself as well as anyone who doesn’t seem to agree with his views.
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[Spoiler Alert] David Simon makes it clear, to me at least, in Season 5 that the role of newspapers should be more focused on promoting social reform or at least taking a hard look at failing institutions as opposed to Pulitzer factories. Bowden’s skepticism is evident by his parenthetical inclusion of the paper’s reception of three Pulitzer prizes under the direction of his friends. But Bowden is missing the point. The valuation of awards by The Sun is an illustration of the very issue Simon is trying to address in Season 5. Yes, his treatment of the media is colored by his own personal experiences. But his anger does not come solely from personal grudges. The executives at newspaper companies are as beholden to the stakeholders of the corporations that own them as are mayoral candidates to voters, or police commissioners to City Hall. The systems in place cause this frustrating situation, to the detriment of the large percentage of people involved or affected by them who have no power. Thus I don’t see Simon’s anger stemming solely from personal grudges. Do you think Bowden makes a fair argument that these “grudges” are big factors? Bowden claims that Simon’s personal feelings have caused him to exaggerate and stray into fiction, but gives few specific examples. After watching The Wire, do you think what Bowden says is true? Has Simon sacrificed accuracy for his personal feelings?
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For a show that claims to be as realistic as The Wire does, I wonder if it is entirely fair that Simon is so entrenched in the subjects of the show. When I watched the entire series last year, I had no idea that Simon had such issues with so many people with whom he has worked and engaged. Even though the show is more about the institutions than the people involved in these situations, it seems likely that many characters in the show are based on real individuals. It seems possible that characters like Burrell are designed based on real individuals; our negative view of Burrell may be unfairly biased by Simon’s own experiences. Some characters are portrayed in a sympathetic light, while Simon seems content to let others be hated by the audience.
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After reading this article, I had the same concern of the biases that could be included in the show due to Simon’s past relationships with several of the individuals and institutions in which he discusses. After learning about Simon’s hatred and mistrust towards particular individuals, I first felt as though this would change the way I viewed the portrayal of different institutions seen in the show. On the other hand, like Anthony claims, the institutions at whole are evaluated through many different characters and situations. Therefore, I believe that the audience is able to get a clear enough picture by seeing both the different types of individuals in each institution (those who want to be honest vs. those who want to get ahead). Corruption is evident in each institution, yet there are always a few characters who are trying to change the system. I do not believe that the biases brought about from Simon’s past will change the value of the show in exploring institutions and urban America. If anything, his experiences and involvement with different institutions make me trust his portrayals more than they make me question the biases. Furthermore, bias is always to be expected when a person has had experience in a particular place or situation. Whether this lessens the legitimacy of his portrayals is questionable, especially due to all of the praise by scholars who have studied urban America for many years.
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Bowden discusses his issue with Simon’s interjection of personal frustrations into a show that is heralded as a true perspective into the complexities of Baltimore. Although he qualifies these qualms with comments about artistic license and the power of fiction writing vs. journalism, it becomes evident that Bowden is attempting to remove the illusion of absolute veracity that supports The Wire. I think it’s unfair to be so harsh on Simon for relieving personal vendettas or gaining catharsis through his characters. In many ways, I see The Wire as synonymous with shows like The Colbert Report and The Daily Show in that all series take modern day issues and present them to audiences with a twist. Neither Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart consider themselves journalists, and in the same vein Simon has removed himself from the world of journalism to reach the public through his television series. The question raised here parallels concerns about satirical political commentary – do these shows have a special duty to their viewers to be more accurate because audiences rely on them for factual information? Do the semiotics of interpretation switch from author-oriented to audience-dictated as the show gains prestige as an anthropologic anthology?
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